It's unusual that in any police situation, we have both a complete video record of the incident as well as a contiguous audio recording of what the officers were saying when you see them on their radios. Um, this is remarkable. It's timely and I think it shows without any doubt how reckless and irresponsible the altman's charges were yesterday. If you go back and look at the quotes on the record of how he described this incident, what occurred and then you for yourselves see what happened. You shouldn't need me to say those are reckless statements. Now, I spent plenty of time in my career dealing with politicians who wanted to demagogue an issue. I'm used to it, and on some levels, it doesn't bother me. That's part of the game. What does bother me is that there are politicians out there who want the families of our officers to think that we're putting them in the field with equipment that's a threat to them. Now, to plant that seed is reckless, and it's irresponsible when you know that you're wrong on the facts. Now, we're going to show you the tape. The tape starts after the critical incident. All right? The DA has been generous enough to allow us to show that part of it. You can understand why we don't show the whole thing because it's going to be part of a court proceeding. You should know that before the tape starts, the officers have already checked on the medical condition and vital signs of the person who has been wounded and satisfied him themselves that he's not bleeding profusely. But the first thing they do, and the tape starts with the first officer calling for medical assistance and being acknowledged, everyone's perfectly calm. Time goes by. The second officer tries to go on the air and he gets the tone that was described with such passion yesterday. Now, the tone is a busy signal. But the preceding radio system, you didn't know if you were heard. All right? If you went on the air and started talking, you would think the dispatcher heard you. But if somebody else was talking at the same time and had gone on before, you didn't get through and you didn't know you hadn't gotten through. The new radio system gives you essentially a busy signal. The beep doesn't mean the radio doesn't work. It means somebody else is talking right now. That's all it means. The way you can overcome that is to push the emergency button. I'm not going to quibble with the officers. They were no longer in an emergency. I'm not criticizing, but the point was they didn't push the emergency button. They pushed the regular talk button. They got a busy signal. Radio was telling them nobody's hearing you yet. After about two tries, the officer gets through. What is he asking for? He's not asking for somebody come quick, back us up. He's not panicking. He's saying, "I want another unit here. We need a supervisor. This is an officer involved shooting." He doesn't get acknowledged right away because the dispatcher is obviously getting the ambulance to respond. But you'll see through the whole thing. He gets through. Everything is calm. The radio works. First officer gets through immediately. Second officer gets, as I say, a busy signal initial because somebody else is talking. That's all that means. All right? Doesn't mean the system's failing. It means it's working. Now, the alderman who was so exercised about this never reached out to me to find out what happened. Never called up and said, "I'm hearing a report that there was a radio failure. I'm hearing there was a critical incident and officer's lives were in danger. Can you help me out? would you like, you know, would he, you know, he didn't ask for something wildly inventive like a fact. All right? He simply decided to go off and get his press coverage. So, as I said moments ago, my concern here isn't irresponsible, but politicians is behaving irresponsibly. That's normal. What concerns me is there's thousands of people out there who have loved ones in this police department, you know, out there on the line. And I do not want them to think that we would willfully tolerate a piece of equipment but put them in jeopardy. And this tape clearly shows that at no time were the officers in any jeopardy because of their radio system. Right? They just faced a very dangerous situation and behaved admirably, but their radio system never put them in any jeopardy. So, let's show that first. We can run it a couple of times and then if you've got any additional questions, we'll uh we'll go from there. Okay. 2130. 2130. [Music] 2130. Stay alive. 2130. 2130. Uh, it's an emergency. [Music] I need a med unit at my location for a conscious and breathing 30-year-old Hispanic male. Gunshot wound to the uh stomach. [Music] That's a second officer. Got the busy signal. Second busy signal. I'm almost 23 at that location on my way. 2130 here. 2130 2130. [Music] I didn't call for another car. I called for the menu. 2130. 2130. This is an officer involved shooting. We're going to need a supervisor here, please. 2111. And probably another car would help too. 21. We have an officer involved shooting at 2128 West National. [Music] Now you can go to your own tapes, but the quotes that we saw yesterday trying to call for backup. The radio failed these officers not once, not twice, but three times. Horrendous, dangerous situation. His mother's bleeding profusely. Well, that's totally untrue. It's unconscionable we allow a system to exist and put these officers safety and the safety of our citizens at risk. I mean, I don't see that here. No technology in the universe works perfectly 100% of the time. In this instance, however, it did work perfectly. The officers got through and transmitted. And when they tried to transmit when somebody else was transmitting at exactly the same time, the radio told them. I've got 1500 officers with assigned radios. If theoretically 1450 of them are thrilled with it and love it, you can still come up with 50 stories. Now, does that mean I've got a troubled system? If you come up with 10 stories, then I've got 10 stories to refute. Does that mean I have a troubled system? I mean, the challenge is, you know, the thing is functioning at an optimum level for this technology. Now, the first officer does call it an emergency. Why wouldn't he then have used the emergency uh communication element as you said? The the purpose for the emergency button is to clear the air. Okay. He was able to get through immediately. So without having to do that. Exactly. Okay. If the second officer was having an emergency, he would have or should have pushed the button. I think he should clearly say, "Hey, he has having an emergency. They're asking for an additional unit, not a backup. The danger's passed." And the car says when he does get through, I'm almost there. The ambulance has already been called. The ambulance has already been called. And so then he gets on the air and says, "Well, by the way, not only is it a man who's been shot here, but it's officer involved. Send me a supervisor." They say, "Okay." For the first time in the history of the Milwaukee Police Department, every uniformed officer in patrol is assigned a personal radio. All right? They're assigned a sidearm. They're assigned handcuffs. They're assigned their own radio. We've never had that before. And the point is that if they get separated, if anything happens, they can both transmit separately if need be. But like every radio system that exists in the world, if two people talk at the same time, somebody's not going to get through. What's new about this radio system is the person that's not getting through is told electronically through the beeping system. That's important. Otherwise, you think you got through and nobody heard you. I've been that guy years ago, right? Help. I need help. And I think they've heard me. And then I find out somebody's doing a plate check. Nobody heard me. And now you know you weren't hurt. That's the purpose of the beep. Nothing's failing. It's working. We stress with the officers, if you have a complaint about the radio, file a report. And Officer Abaniac did file a report. He was frustrated that the beeping sound went off. So that day, that very day, Friday, we met with him, with his captain, with our people from the radio room, and they walked through the system. They played the tape. They didn't have the video tape at the time. They played the audio tape and explained what the beeping was again. Okay, this is the first time he'd experienced that. He was obviously at a crime scene. He was a little frustrated. He couldn't get on the air right away, but it was explained to him. If you had the old radio system, you wouldn't have known you weren't on the air. Every district has got a primary channel. Every district has got its own secondary channel. Uh, at the very least, plus there are numerous talk groups for special units. As a matter of fact, theoretically, if four officers from this district had a special operation, they could set up their own side channel and not interfere with anybody else. Well, the emergency had passed. I mean, they had they had prevailed over the asalent. They had called for medical assistant. They checked the status of the individual. You don't hear any officer, you know, acting like they're in any imminent danger or having an imminent problem. They're standing by. They're holding the scene waiting for the ambulance and waiting for a supervisor. You know, 100% of the department has been through this training. We've done training videos. We have done officers going out in the field teaching them how to use the radios. There's been no shortage of training on this. Now, obviously, we're going to remind everybody again, remember, because, you know, we went through a period of time where we didn't activate the emergency button because people were pushing it by accident too much. They were because what happened when you push the emergency button, nobody can transmit but you. And we were having guys leaning on them. We were having guys, you know, pushing them by accident. We were shutting down the channel for, you know, 30 seconds with dead air because somebody had pushed the emergency button. So, we deactivated it for a period of time several months ago and then taught everybody how it worked. Be careful. You're shutting down the system if you push it. Okay. So, everybody got the message and now we've activated. We have done extensive training and people are under orders to file reports when there's problems with the radio so we can identify if it's a mechanical malfunction or operator error. Right now our complaint rate is down to approximately 1/100th of a percent of the total push to talks. Okay. Now the standard for accepting the contract is 95% which means 5% error rate. Right now we're getting something on the order of 0.01% trouble reports out of the universe of pushto talks. Every time somebody pushes a radio that's an event. You know we do about a million of those a quarter. We spend thousands of hours of training and technology getting this system up where it works and is working reliably every day. But you know the the narrative now the narrative hook is troubled radio system. So all you have to do is say you had a trouble and we've got a fun you know we've got a big story and then we look and say okay what was the trouble? Well the radio worked the way it's supposed to. So in this case you're saying this is perception not reality. Absolutely. The radio and we'll show the tape. The radio did what it's supposed to do. That's why it beeped. Somebody else was talking at the same time. [Music]